Of course you don't always know where you are going – but for some reason all movements happen because they were meant to.There's a sense of inevitable tragedy at the heart of Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace and David Adams Richards is so masterful at introducing characters and then subverting the reader's assumptions about them that, while nothing is as it initially seems, the reader doesn't feel tricked – just satisfied when deeper truths are revealed.
The book opens with a fight between 22-year-old Ivan Basterache and his wife of twenty months; the slow-witted, epileptic Cindi. Ivan looks like a monster (there was a shotgun involved that sent Cindi running into the night in just her underwear), but as the story develops, Ivan is revealed to be a noble and loyal soul. Others shun him as “puritanical” – no fun at all – but Ivan is the friend you want around to stare down your bullies, pay off your debts, solve your coyote problem (even if Ivan is sympathetic towards a coyote mama who is just trying to protect her kits).
Ivan walked right up to him, with a boldness he always had, his eyes very bright and yet always a little detached from the moment; the eyes, in fact, of a person who has survived and lived by himself, without much help in early youth from anyone – neither mother nor father.As his separation from Cindi drags out, bored neighbours stir up trouble, taking Cindi's side against Ivan, until rumours become fact and even his own father wants to ingratiate himself with others in the community by bad-talking his own son.
Antony's story was the same one at all times. It was just presented differently, with an indefinable self-deception and a lasting hope that the best points in it were true. And it had become clear now that his side lay with people who had made light of him, ridiculed his family, cheated him out of money, defamed his wife, bore false witness to his son, and held him in contempt.This is a relatively short book but its mood and characters are just so truthful – I know these people; I'm related to these people – and it was a delight to dip a toe in David Adams Richards' New Brunswick once again.
There's something about New Brunswick that I just find so backward (and this is just my own experiences; I'm sure there are many fine people from the province): I remember nothing but want and coarseness from the time I lived in Saint John (from ages 3 - 9); I successfully convinced Ken and Lolo to move up to Cambridge from Moncton when they were having trouble settling down there (despite Ken's education and work history, he couldn't get better than seasonal employment because everywhere he worked relied on the staff collecting EI through the winter); and most of all, I think of my Great Uncle Donny, who spent most of his adult life in the Nackawick area -- and he's who I'm talking about when I say that I'm related to unsavoury characters like those in Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace.
When my parents retired back to Nova Scotia (to the area where my Dad, and his Uncle Donny, had been born), Donny started showing up intermittently; calling my Dad his favourite relative; my Dad understanding that (like Antony in the book) his uncle could say one thing to his face and another to everyone else around the village. One time, Donny asked my Dad if he could set up a trailer in his back woods -- it wouldn't be seen from the road, and as my parents have something like 15 or 20 acres of forest, Donny figured that his favourite relative couldn't deny an old man a retirement property on the lake that he, too, loved to swim and boat in as a child. Even if there wasn't a property owners' covenant against trailers (this is upscale cottage country), my Dad was unlikely to allow his uncle to squat in his woods, and he told him so. That set Uncle Donny off in a rage, and to anyone who would listen, he referred to my Dad as "a dog with a bone", and that expression delighted my father who then roared with laughter every time my Mum teasingly called him "a dog with a bone".
Still, Uncle Donny would come visit my parents every now and then, and when my Dad grew tired of the WWII-era army personnel carrier he had restored (and nicknamed "Major Payne"), he gave it to his uncle, the WWII vet.
The unveiling was a very touching ceremony and I was proud that my girls were there at my Dad's side as he watched his uncle laying a wreath. But, as soon as we got back to my parents' place, Donny and Camilla started drinking, and things quickly became uncomfortable. They were smoking in the house -- which even my Dad had stopped doing by then -- and when Mum told them to step outside, Donny was abusive to her and refused to stop. Eventually, he got in a snit and, drunk, he and Camilla drove away. Of course, Kennedy wondered if she was still getting a "fryup" -- whatever that was -- and I had to say I had no idea. They did come back, after dinner, and standing at the campfire, this is when Donny gave my Dad the rifle he had "liberated" from a German farmwife during the war (which I talked about here some other time). Things were kind of normalised after that, but they were so drunk that eventually Camilla pissed her pants, tumbled backwards off the rock she was sitting on by the fire, and cracked her head off the ground. Donny brought her up to bed and I don't know if we saw them again before they left. I do know that visit was the last time I saw Donny before he died in 2008.
After the funeral, I believe Dad gave the German rifle back to Donny's family as he thought it was a drunken impulse that was later regretted. And Donny's daughter called my Dad up to ask if he wanted to buy back Major Payne.
This is all I know about New Brunswick and the folks from there, and based on my own experiences, David Adams Richards always captures the essence of the place.
